The Taylor County Sheriff’s Office, Wednesday evening, said on their social media page, that “Area authorities are on the lookout for a black male and female that are going around selling hotel coupons. They are driving a newer maroon Suburban or Yukon. A similar vehicle has been spotted near locations of recent residential burglaries.”

Possible suspects in Montgomery County Burglaries.

Officials say “If you see these individuals please do not approach them and contact your local law enforcement agency immediately.”

The Democrat in Iowa’s third congressional district whose 11th-hour effort to qualify for June’s Primary ballot fell short has a new strategy. Theresa Greenfield of Des Moines is hoping the seven dozen Democrats who serve on their party’s third district governing committee vote Monday to place her name in nomination. Greenfield and her campaign team say their reading of state law indicates it’s a way to get her name printed on the ballot.

“I am confident that a sense of fairness, doing what’s right is important to Democratic leadership and we’ll get this resolved on Monday,” Greenfield says. Iowa’s attorney general has declined to issue a legal opinion on Greenfield’s strategy. And the secretary of state’s office has not indicated whether it would accept Greenfield’s nomination next week. So why is Greenfield in this predicament? Greenfield’s campaign submitted petition signatures last Wednesday to the Secretary of State — paperwork required to qualify for the primary.

The next day Greenfield’s campaign manager admitted he forged some of the signatures. He was fired. Greenfield withdrew the tainted petitions and last Friday, Greenfield’s campaign raced through the 16 counties in the third district to collect the nearly 18-hundred petition signatures she needed by the Friday evening deadline. Greenfield got help from the campaign of a rival as well as the campaigns of three Democratic candidates for governor, but the effort fell about 300 signatures short.

“It’s like an old barn-raising kind of an event,” Greenfield says. “Now, it didn’t turn out the way we wanted, but the effort was spectacular and it also speaks volumes to people’s desire to let me have a chance on the ballot.” Democratic leaders in the third district are pondering whether to even meet Monday. Taking the action Greenfield seeks without the attorney general’s legal opinion could lead to expensive lawsuits for the Democratic Party. Greenfield had raised the most money among the field of Democratic candidates in the third district and she’d been featured by a national magazine profiling female congressional candidates before hitting last week’s stumbling block.

“I was not going to allow forged signatures to stand with my name on it,” Greenfield says. “…The folks here in the third district just learned who Theresa Greenfield is and the kind of decisions I’ll make as a leader in Washington, D.C. and that is (this): ‘I will choose to do what’s right.'” Greenfield could choose to run as a write-in candidate, but Greenfield told Radio Iowa she is not ready to discuss that option. Three other Democratic candidates in the third congressional district DID meet last Friday’s paperwork deadline to submit their names for the June Primary ballot. They are Cindy Axne, Pete D’Alessandro and Eddie J. Mauro (MAR-oh). All three are from the Des Moines area.

(Radio Iowa)

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A Republican strategist has challenged the filing paperwork of the only GOP candidate seeking to run against Gov. Kim Reynolds in the upcoming primary. The Iowa Secretary of State’s Office says a formal challenge was filed Wednesday against Republican Ron Corbett’s paperwork to be on the June 5 primary ballot.

Corbett submitted petition signatures last week. Craig Robinson, a former political director for the Republican Party of Iowa, claims Corbett’s campaign turned in duplicate signatures that put the former Cedar Rapids mayor below the required signature threshold.

A review board that includes the secretary of state will meet as early as next week to discuss evidence and issue a decision. A Corbett aide says the campaign is confident it has enough signatures. Reynolds formally launched her gubernatorial campaign this month. Six Democrats and two libertarians are also running for governor.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The father of a 16-year-old girl who was tortured and starved to death is pleading guilty to three counts of assault while participating in a felony causing a serious injury. The Des Moines Register reports that 47-year-old Joseph Finn II appeared in court Wednesday to plead to the charges, which each carry up to 10 years in prison. Finn will seek to have the sentences on the three counts served all at once when he’s sentenced on May 4.

Finn’s ex-wife, Nicole Finn, is serving three life sentences for the October 2016 death of Natalie Finn. Officials have said the emaciated girl weighed just 81 pounds when she died.

Joseph Finn did not live in the West Des Moines home where his adopted daughter died, but prosecutors say he boarded up the windows in the house after Nicole complained Natalie and other adopted children were escaping and begging neighbors for food.

WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) — Police in northeastern Iowa have arrested and charged a man suspected in a string of convenience store robberies in Waterloo during which at least two clerks were sexually assaulted. The Courier reports 25-year-old Jamar Ronod Wise was arrested Tuesday as he entered a Waterloo convenience store wearing all black with his face covered. That’s the attire victims of four other robberies in Waterloo described the suspect as wearing.

Police say Wise is suspected in a Feb. 10 robbery in which the clerk was fondled, punched several times in the face when she resisted and sexually assaulted. Wise is also suspected of attacking another clerk in a Feb. 27 robbery. Police say Wise also carried out robberies on Jan. 29 and Jan. 31. Wise is being held on $1.8 million bond.

VERSAILLES, Mo. (AP) — The family of an Iowa man who drowned to death while handcuffed is upset that the former Missouri state trooper was allowed to do community service by helping with a live theater production after being convicted in the case. Anthony Piercy pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor boat violation in the 2014 death of Brandon Ellingson, who fell into the Lake of the Ozarks while in Piercy’s custody. Piercy was sentenced in September to 50 hours of community service and 10 days in jail.

The judge didn’t specify where community service had to be completed, so Piercy was given credit for working a play at the Royal Theatre in Versailles, Missouri. He has worked in community theater before, the Kansas City Star reported. “I thought it was a joke,” said Craig Ellingson, the father of the 20-year-old who drowned. “He (Piercy) had been in plays before, that was his hobby. That would be like me working at my company for community service. .. Basically, it was a picnic for him.”

Piercy’s hours were signed off by Cindy Davenport, the executive director of the Royal Arts Council Inc. She said Piercy assisted with the production and performances of the play. Helping out with a community play isn’t what community service should look like, said William Camm Seay, the special prosecutor who initially charged Piercy in December 2015.

Piercy pulled over Brandon Ellingson of Clive, Iowa, on the water for suspicion of boating while intoxicated in May 2014. He was taking Ellingson for a breath test when the Arizona State University student fell into the water. Piercy had put the wrong style of life jacket on the handcuffed man, causing the safety device to come off when he went into the water. The trooper was fired after Ellingson’s death. A lawsuit filed by Piercy looking to get his job back is ongoing.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa State University’s unconstitutional crackdown on a pro-marijuana student group’s T-shirts will cost state taxpayers nearly $1 million in damages and legal fees.

Court documents indicate a judge approved $598,208 in attorney fees and costs on Wednesday. That amount is in addition to payments the state agreed to in January to settle the case including $75,000 each to Paul Gerlich and Erin Furleigh, the students who filed the lawsuit in 2014 and $193,000 to their lawyers for federal court appeals.

The $940,000 total doesn’t include work by the Iowa Attorney General’s office, which represented ISU administrators. The costs stem from a politically-motivated attempt by university administrators in 2012 to block T-shirt designs that featured the ISU mascot and a marijuana leaf. Judges found ISU administrators violated the students’ free-speech rights.